Alison Redford is back, relaxed and ready to rumble with anyone who blames her for her former party’s problems

PHOTOS: A screen shot of former Alberta Premier Alison Redford as she appeared in the CBC’s interview yesterday, relaxed and confident. Below: Ms. Redford on the day in October 2011 she was chosen as the Progressive Conservative Party’s leader and premier of Alberta, and on the day in March 2014 she was sent packing by her caucus.

Alison Redford is back, and she’s not about to take responsibility for the sorry fate of the Progressive Conservative Party she once led.

Those of us who toil in the blogosphere welcome her back unreservedly. How could it be otherwise? Ms. Redford played a pivotal role in the most superlatively entertaining period in Alberta political history – up to then mainly known for its predictability and dullness – since the election of Social Credit in 1935.

Ms. Redford was the unexpected winner of the race to lead the then four-decades-old Progressive Conservative dynasty in October 2011, whereupon the politics of the province immediately descended into chaos, whence they may only be recovering now.

In short order after Ms. Redford’s emergence as Tory leader, the Wildrose Party, created by parts of the oil industry to backfoot her predecessor Ed Stelmach’s review, of petroleum royalties became a serious contender, and but for the grace of God (in a manner of speaking) nearly defeated her government in 2012.

Thereafter, scandal and division roiled her government. There was Air Redford. There was the Sky Palace. There was the emergence of a hard-right Redford to replace the soft-centre Redford who won the 2012 election, outraging the progressive voters who had saved her government’s bacon that spring. There were laws to ban strikes … and eliminate free speech on topics inconvenient to the government.

Eventually she was fired by her own caucus for, as they saw it, a multitude of sins – the greatest being leading the party ever lower in the polls. She was sent packing one day in March by Dave Hancock, the last competent Conservative Premier of Alberta, who alas for the Tories served only in a temporary role.

Mr. Hancock was followed by the bumbling Jim Prentice, who neutralized the Wildrose Party but then bungled the election so spectacularly we saw the rise of an NDP majority under Rachel Notley this spring, a development so unexpected any pundit who predicted it a year earlier would have been accused of recreational pipe dreaming!

Then, yesterday, Ms. Redford re-emerged in a short CBC interview, looking relaxed and cheerful, smiling frequently, laughing deeply at times, denying any responsibility for the fate of her former party and signalling, I thought, that she intends to see her tarnished reputation rehabilitated.

Ms. Redford told the CBC she plans to work in public policy – though whether or not she has a job yet is unclear.

No matter. She is out from under the cloud that followed her for a few months after her dismissal as leader by her caucus in March 2014, the possibility that some kind of charges could result from the RCMP investigation into the Fakes on a Plane imbroglio, in which made-up passengers were block booked by someone and then cancelled at the last moment so Ms. Redford and her aides could fly on government aircraft in privacy. The RCMP announced last February the investigation was closed, and there would be no charges.

She laughed heartily in the interview at former Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith’s defection to the Tories last December, a move so cynical and unpopular it arguably set the stage for the NDP victory. “I don’t understand what makes people tick sometimes,” she chuckled.

She sniffed at Mr. Prentice’s petulant election-night resignation. “It was a very surprising step. People go into politics for different reasons. People leave politics for different reasons.”

She used the election of NDP Premier Rachel Notley to take a not-so-subtle shot at the party old boys who brought in Jim Prentice, supposedly to correct the errors of her rule. “Twice when Albertans have gone to general elections, they have elected women as premiers. I think that is maybe lost on some people. But I think that’s pretty exciting.”

What do you want to bet, though, given the recent history, that if Alberta’s second woman premier had been Ms. Smith, Ms. Redford’s assessment wouldn’t have been so sanguine?

Truth be told, there wasn’t really a whole lot of news in Ms. Redford’s commentary. The important stuff was in the tone, and the hints therein of the role Ms. Redford expects to play in the future. That is to say, she won’t be bullied into silence.

Desperate for a news hook, the CBC chose to lead with Ms. Redford’s confirmation she is no longer a member of the party she once led – and that at least some former PCs are certain she led down the garden path to destruction.

But this isn’t really news. Indeed, Ms. Redford wasn’t a member of the party during the last couple of months she was its leader, a fact reported by the Edmonton Sun’s Matt Dykstra back in September 2014. “Officials confirmed that Redford never renewed her PC membership in 2014 and was not a member even during the final months of her tenure as leader,” Mr. Dykstra wrote at the time.

So it’s hardly an earth-shattering revelation that Ms. Redford hasn’t bothered to rejoin her old party, whose legislative caucus after all ended her political career. She is forgiven if she doesn’t feel very warmly about it given that history.

It’s more interesting that Ms. Redford doesn’t seem prepared to acknowledge that she played any role in its PC Party’s most desperate moment, and may blame the decision to replace her for the current troubles of the party, reduced a rump of nine MLAs in the provincial Legislature.

Isn’t this the meaning of her most substantial response to the CBC interviewer? “When I was running to be the leader of the PC Party, and then in the election, where I was elected premier, we talked about change,” she said, pointedly. “And I think Albertans wanted to see change. And I think that they decided that after watching the last three or four years in Alberta that the best way that they could get change was to change governing parties, and I can certainly understand that.”

As she said this, she broke into a broad smile.

In truth, Ms. Redford must take some of the responsibility for the fate of the PCs she led. But when the history of this turbulent period of Alberta history is written, Mr. Prentice and those old boys who wanted him so badly will have to shoulder a big portion of the blame too, just as Ms. Notley will get enormous credit for the pitch-perfect campaign that set the stage for what came next.

Still, here’s the real message of Alison Redford’s interview yesterday: Her star turn may be over, and the reviews may have been pretty mixed, but don’t expect her just to fade into the night and take the blame for everything that happened. She doesn’t see it that way.

12 Comments to: Alison Redford is back, relaxed and ready to rumble with anyone who blames her for her former party’s problems

Sam Gunsch

July 21st, 2015

re the conclusion of this post: ‘Still, here’s the real message of Alison Redford’s interview yesterday: Her star turn may be over, and the reviews may have been pretty mixed, but don’t expect her just to fade into the night and take the blame for everything that happened. She doesn’t see it that way.’

I agree with that evaluation.

…it confirms her true/sincere commitment to the modern ideology of the AB/Canada/USAUK conservative ideology.

TC

You are hung up on her name. She is a Conservative Shark. If for no other reason look at her expenditures on herself. The Cons were in big trouble on the polls and they put a skirt in with a Red in her name and it appears you fell for it.

jerrymacgp

July 21st, 2015

When she was elected PC leader, and so also automatically Premier, she was labelled as being from the Progressive side of the Progressive-Conservative party. But in government, especially after the 2012 general election, she governed from the hard-core right wing Conservative side, attacking worker rights on a number of fronts. This offended centrist voters who had believed her to be something new. Then the culture of entitlement she exhibited came to light, offending the right wing (remember, in real terms, the costs of the South Africa trip and the Fakes on a Plane scandal were truly insignificant, amounting to little more than a rounding error in a multi-billion dollar provincial budget), as well as the egalitarian among us, who don’t want their politicians to live higher off the hog than the rest of us.

However, I’m not sure she should accept all the blame for what happened to the PC party. The Prentice coronation, and his spectacular incompetence as a politician, must be handed much of the responsibility for the drubbing the PCs took in May. I personally think the cynical Wildrose floor-crossing was the nail in the PC coffin. Had the Wildrose base not been so totally re-energized by that event, the election would have been much more competitive, and we might have seen a much different result emerge.

political ranger

July 21st, 2015

Ideology reigns supreme in the land ‘o bubbling crude.

Since at least the time of Klein common sense, good sense, planning and rational thought have all been sent to second place in favor of the dogma and doctrine of conservative ideology. Even if it was not well, or indeed, at all understood.

I fervently hope that the Notley government drop the NDP sloganeering and govern with intelligence, grace and forethought, not when you think of it, a great challenge for any group, despite it’s absence in Alberta for some 2 or 3 decades. So far she has done an admirable job, I hope she keeps it up.

Klein ran on personality. As Mayor of Calgary he made sure every available water alltoment was in private hands. Calgary Brewing and the old Armories water rights have more water than Calgary and the Bow is slated to dry up. Good Sense? I only hope the NDP can undo a lot of his Good sense.

He stared the attack on the Heritage Trust fund,using it as general revenues in place of taxes, oil getting the big dividends. Good Sense? He should have been hung!

He started the practice of do what ever in hell you want to do the public is stupid! Ask for public bids on projects, then hand the projects off to insiders without ever making public who bid or how much was bid. Klein was political filth! Of course, that’s just me.

The Conservatives bought into Ralph Klein’s formula and popularity as being a winning formula and stuck with it, changing nothing. Redford did nothing at all that Ralph would not have loved. Like all the premiers in place they were trying to emulate Ralph who was the original thief. I agree with Redford; sort of. She alone did not bring down the Conservative Government. Blogs like Alberta Politics serving up a regular dish of fact and reference is what finally killed them.

As I recall the same amount of people voted as in the previous election, and the same amount of ignorants didn’t bother to vote. This means a bunch of conservatives discovered there was nothing in the cupboard when the province hit the wall.

ronmac

July 21st, 2015

It’s all a question of attitude. Far from deflecting blame for her part in the fall of the Tory dynasty, she should embrace it, taking as much credit as she can. For what? For restoring a semblance of democracy in Alberta. Helping Albertans understand that it’s not a bad thing to throw out a tired, old government at election time. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.

If the NDP gov’t had any decency, they would name a park after Allison Redford. Or maybe a hospital wing. Or how about naming a school after Allison’s Redford’s daughter? That would work.

Naming a dog park after her would be overkill; She played the game, anointed herself queen of the ball and made it clear to the world she was beyond the law. She was a trash premier; a figure head put in there to bamboozle the public. She doesn’t deserve so much as a line of print.

Chris

July 24th, 2015

Entitled and arrogant while in power, and now petulant and dismissive. That she rarely met in person with her MLAs and that she couldn’t be bothered to be a member of the organization she purportedly lead says all we need to know about Madam Deficit. Good riddance.